Nobody Calls Me Lazy…

I wasn’t even going to write this — who has the motivation? — but even Mike McCarthy seems to agree with me. “We need to do a better job of finishing games,” McCarthy said. “We’re up 28-3, we can learn from that experience and put the opponent away. There was some sloppiness in our play down the stretch that we can learn from.” (McCarthy also said the team played well in all three phases of the game, but that doesn’t support my argument, so I’m choosing not to emphasize it.)

Let me nitpick one last point before we put this whole thing to bed and gang-scoff about the non-scandal scandal being fanned by PFT. Our Cheesehead friends write: “If you are up on a team 28-3, does it really matter if you are allowing their running back 4.4 yards per carry?” (Andy made the same point in his post.)

Maybe not. But Foster had most of his yardage in the first half, before the game was a blowout. He had forty-nine yards on 12 carries (4.1 average). This isn’t awful defense, but given the lack of weapons for the Panthers and what the Packers were able to do to Adrian Peterson last week, it’s not great, either. And then, as Charles Woodson acknowledged, things got worse in the second half.

Anyway, I think my basic point holds: the Packers played reasonably well on offense, occasionally well on special teams, and not very well on defense. We’ll just agree to disagree about whether the performance yesterday would have beaten the Lions or the Cowboys.